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Denver camping ban hurts women and children

There simply aren't enough resources to shelter everyone in our city who is homeless, writes Geoffrey Bateman, board member of The Gathering Place. (Greg Lindstrom, Times-Call)

The first anniversary of Denver's camping ban was in May, but I still haven't found much reason to celebrate.

Nor have many of the women with whom I work at The Gathering Place — a daytime, drop-in shelter in central Denver for women and children experiencing homelessness.

In fact, with the closing of the winter overflow shelters on May 1, this anniversary looms as a dismal reminder of the lack of affordable housing in our city and the lingering mixture of hostility and apathy for those who find themselves on the street.

At The Gathering Place, the ban continues to frustrate many of its members, especially the writers whom I've come to know over the past five years as a volunteer who's helped them on a variety of writing projects.

Despite the range of issues they write about, a common strain expresses their hopes to be seen as human beings who deserve compassion, understanding and respect — the sort of things many of us who are securely housed feel entitled to in our lives.

But such regard can be hard to come by when you're homeless. Through their writing, though, they cultivate a sense of their own worth even as they tutor me in the injustices they've faced.

You might understand my indignation, then, when the debate over the camping ban disparaged the very people it aimed to help. In 2011, Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown put it perhaps most clearly when he told The Denver Post, "I want to get them [the homeless] off of our Main Street ... . We have to stand up for our businesses downtown and our women and children who are afraid to go downtown."

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But pitting "the homeless" against our women and children overshadows an important reality and perpetuates gendered inaccuracies about people who lack housing in Denver.

According to the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, 44 percent of the homeless in the metropolitan area are women, and 64 percent are households with children.

Despite these statistics, the rhetoric of this debate has rendered these women an even more invisible part of an already ignored demographic, relegating them to the margins of our understanding of this issue.

"[The ban] makes me feel like a piece of dirt," said Susan, another member at The Gathering Place. "We don't matter at all. It's just pushing me to outer areas. Where do I go where I am safe? So where do I go, I'd like to ask?"

A reasonable, if infuriating, question, especially if you run the numbers: With only about 230 emergency shelter beds available to women on any given night in Denver, and an estimated 412 unaccompanied women needing shelter, the odds of getting a decent answer aren't great.

A report recently released by Denver Homeless Out Loud also raises serious doubts about the ban's efficacy, concluding that even as it has successfully moved the homeless out of downtown, it has failed to improve service delivery and quality of life for them.

According to the report, 40 percent of the 512 homeless individuals surveyed have "tried to use shelters more often," but 65 percent of them "find shelter access to be harder than it was before the ban." Seventy-three percent have been turned away from shelter since the ban was implemented.

Overall, the study concludes that the lives of most of the respondents have become "more challenging, more stressful, and less safe since the camping ban began."

Bottom line? There simply aren't enough resources to shelter everyone in our city who is homeless, and criminalizing an activity that many find necessary for survival hurts them and hides the challenges of homelessness from public sight.

It's time, then, to repeal the camping ban and stand in true solidarity with those experiencing homelessness in our community by providing the resources they need, like affordable housing. As well, we must transform our attitudes about homelessness and embrace the thousands of individuals without housing in the metro area as authentic members of our community, worthy of our compassion and understanding.

We must show women like Susan that they do matter.

Geoffrey Bateman is assistant professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University, and serves on The Gathering Place's board of directors.

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